Afula, Israel

Afula ( he, עפולה Arabic: العفولة) is a city in the Northern District of Israel, often known as the "Capital of the Valley" due to its strategic location in the Jezreel Valley. As of , the city had a population of .

Afula's ancient tell suggests habitation from the Late Calcolithic period to the Ayyubid period. It has been proposed that Afula is the location of the village Arbela mentioned in the Onomasticon of Eusebius and the 7th century Samaritan village of ''Kirjath Ophlatha''. A fortress was built at the site during the Mamluk period.

A small village during the Ottoman period, it was sold In 1872 with the entire Jezreel valley to the Lebanese Sursock family. In 1925, the same area was acquired by the American Zionist Commonwealth as part of the Sursock Purchase. The majority Muslim and Christian population was replaced by Jewish immigrants, marking the foundation of modern Afula. After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Afula was settled by Jewish immigrants from Iraq, Yemen and Romania. In 1972, it gained the status of a city. The 1990s saw Jewish immigration from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union contribute to the growth of the city. Since 1995, the city has almost doubled its population.

Etymology

The name follows that of the small Arab village which occupied the site until WW1, possibly originating in the Canaanite-Hebrew root ''ʿofel'' "fortress tower", or the Arab word for "ruptured".

History

An ancient mound or tell known as Tell ʿAfula, located in the heart of modern ʿAfula, suggests almost continuous habitation from the Late Chalcolithic (fourth millennium BCE) to the Ayyubid period in the 13th century. At the beginning of the twentieth century the mound served as a refuse dump for the nearby Arab village of el-Fuleh.

Bronze Age to Byzantine period

For archaeological finds from Tell ʿAfula predating the Crusader/Mamluk fortress, see the archaeology paragraph.

ʿAfula is possibly the place ''ʿOphlah'', mentioned in the lists of Pharaoh Thutmose III.Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p
40
/ref> Zev Vilnay suggested to identify Afula with biblical ''Ophel'', mentioned in 2 Kings. With the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel, the area continued to be inhabited, and excavations have revealed artifacts from the periods of Persian and Roman rule. It may be identified with Arbela mentioned in the Onomasticon of Eusebius. Claude Reignier Conder suggested that ʿAfula was identical with ''Kirjath Ophlathah'', a place inhabited by Samaritans in the 7th century.Conder, 1876, p
196
/ref>

Crusader/Ayyubid and Mamluk periods

At the centre of Tell ʿAfula stand the remains of a 19 metre square fortress from the Mamluk period, possibly first built during the Crusader period. The lower four courses are made of rough boulders, while the top remaining layer is made of reused Roman sarcophagi. The wall is a total of 5.5 meters tall. Pottery remains indicate that it was occupied in the twelfth and thirteenth century.Pringle, 1997, p
18
/ref> The gate is dated based on pottery findings to the Mamluk period (13th–14th centuries CE), but so far (after the June 2017 campaign) it couldn't be determined when fortress itself was built, since it is perfectly possible that just the gate was renovated in the Mamluk period; the square shape and the use of Roman sarcophagi as building stones is closely resembling the Crusader fortress at Sepphoris.

In 1321, ʿAfula was mentioned under the name of ''Afel'' by Marino Sanuto the Elder.Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p
41
/ref>

Ottoman period

A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 showed this place, named as ''Afouleh'' in a French transliteration of the Arabic.

In 1816, James Silk Buckingham passed by and described ''Affouli'' as being built on rising ground, and containing only a few dwellings. He noted several other nearby settlements in sight, all populated by Muslims.

In 1838, Edward Robinson described both ʿAfula and the adjacent El Fuleh as "deserted".
William McClure Thomson, in a book published in 1859, noted that ʿAfula and the adjacent El Fuleh were "both now deserted, though both were inhabited twenty-five years ago when I first passed this way." Thomson blamed their desertion on the bedouin.

In 1875 Victor Guérin described ʿAfula as a village on a small hill overlooking a little plain. The houses were built of adobe and various other materials. Around the well, which Guérin thought was probably ancient, he noticed several broken sarcophagi serving as troughs. In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' described El ʿAfula as a small adobe village in the plain, supplied by two wells.

A population list from about 1887 showed that el ʿAfula had about 630 inhabitants, all Muslim. Gottlieb Schumacher, as part of surveying for the construction of the Jezreel Valley railway, noted in 1900 that it consisted of 50-55 huts and had 200 inhabitants. North of the village was a grain stop, belonging to the Sursocks.

In 1904 the Ottoman authorities inaugurated the Jezreel Valley railway, at first operating between Haifa and Beysan via ʿAfula and soon extended to Dera'a. Work eventually continued with an extension towards Jerusalem, the connection to Jenin being completed in 1913.

First World War

During World War I, ʿAfulah was a major communications hub. In 1917, when Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen from the British intelligence established contact with the Nili Jewish spy network in Palestine, a German Jewish doctor stationed at al ʿAfulah railway junction provided the British with valuable reconnaissance reports on Ottoman and German troop movements southwards.

With the advance of General Edmund Allenby's British forces into Ottoman Palestine, al ʿAfulah was captured by the 4th Cavalry Division of the Desert Mounted Corps, during the cavalry phase of the Battle of Sharon in September 1918.

British Mandate

According to the British Mandate's 1922 census of Palestine, ''Affuleh'' had 563 inhabitants; 471 Muslims, 62 Christians, 28 Jews and 2 followers of the Baháʼí Faith;Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Nazareth, p
38
/ref> 61 of the Christians were Orthodox, while one was Melkite.

Jewish Afula (est. 1925)

In 1925, the area was acquired by the American Zionist Commonwealth as part of the Sursock Purchase. A quarter of the one hundred Arab families who had lived in the area accepted compensation for their land and left voluntarily; the remainder were evicted. Jews began settling in ʿAfula shortly after as the town developed. Nearby land had been purchased in a similar manner in 1909 or 1910, when Yehoshua Hankin bought 10,000 dunams (10 km²) of land on which Merhavia and Tel Adashim

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